It is well understood, in the art of fabricating PWBs, that certain circuit sections need a special coating, such as gold plating the terminals that intermesh with other circuitry in backboard wiring. Although in a processing "line" it is desirable to move PWBs therethrough in vertical positions, heretofore such PWBs have not been automatically loaded into such processing "lines" while being in vertical positions. Instead, in the prior art, if a processing "line" were designed to operate with vertically positioned PWBs, such PWBs were and are manually fed into the processing "line." It is also well understood that in plating operations, directed to PWBs, it has been the practice to prevent certain circuit areas from being plated by either covering the prohibited areas with masking tape or by effecting a cover, for the prohibited areas, with a "developed" photo resist. The masking tape technique of the prior art which at best is semi-automatic, has proven to be labor intensive (and therefore costly), as well as being somewhat inaccurate. On the other hand, the photo resist technique is reasonably accurate but it is quite costly. The present system employs a masking tape technique, but it is a vast improvement over the prior art method because the present system automatically feeds the PWBs while they are held in vertical positions and both automatically and accurately applies masking tape which may in one mode be without cut-outs and which in another mode has cut-outs removed therefrom. The masking tape which has had the patterns cut therefrom is placed over the PWBs in exact and desired positions but leaves certain sections unprotected so that said certain sections can be plated.